


Stand up

by pleasebekidding



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: All Human, Hurt!Stiles, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Physical Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-12
Updated: 2014-10-12
Packaged: 2018-02-20 21:23:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2443610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pleasebekidding/pseuds/pleasebekidding
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You have a new patient. Stiles Stinlinski.”<br/>Derek nods again, this time a little more appreciatively. He knows.<br/>“Late Sheriff’s kid.”<br/>“He’s nineteen. Not so much a kid.”<br/>“But…”<br/>And Melissa swallows, and turns her face away. “Yeah.”<br/>--<br/>Wherein Derek is Stiles's physical therapist, and everything is horrible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stand up

“You have a new patient.”

Melissa McCall is not someone who would ordinarily be telling Derek Hale about a new patient and for that reason, he is immediately interested. They don’t work closely together. Melissa has never sought out his company nor joined him for lunch in the hospital cafeteria but she has come to him, now, to tell him he has a new patient, and it’s interesting.

To show how interesting he finds it, Derek nods, once, and meets Melissa’s eyes.

“Stiles Stinlinski.”

Derek nods again, this time a little more appreciatively. He knows.

“Late Sheriff’s kid.”

“He’s nineteen. Not so much a kid.”

“But…” 

And Melissa swallows, and turns her face away. “Yeah.”

Story was that the Sheriff had been driving his son – Stiles – to college, to start his Sophomore year, when they’d been hit by a drunk driver (at ten in the morning – who knew what shape the guy had been in the night before). They’d been trapped for hours, and Stiles had watched his father succumb to his injuries, when finally someone had seen the two cars hidden by an embankment. Stiles had been blissfully unconscious, first few days, and in and out of surgeries to repair the shattered bones in his legs.

In the back of his head Derek had known the kid would end up in physical therapy but he hadn’t given it a whole lot of thought. Knew the Sheriff, a little, but not his son, except to frown at in public (because the kid talked and talked and talked and on the odd occasion he’d seen Stiles at a diner or something and been forced (well, not forced, but there was something compelling about it) to watch him eat, Stiles made the weirdest expressions, eyebrows jumping all over his forehead, mouth like a clown’s, wrapped weirdly over a straw or the lip of a coffee mug).

Stiles Stilinski.

“He’s my son’s best friend. They… grew up together, not that either of them grew up, per se.”

“I get it.”

“It’s just…”

“Are you telling me to be nice to him? You ever hear I’m not nice to a client?”

He pronounces client carefully. Doesn’t think of them as patients because when they get to him, they’re not sick any more. They’re healing or healed but changed, and it’s Derek’s job to drag them bodily from a wheelchair and up onto walking apparatus or off crutches. Sometimes they’re learning to live with the idea that the chair is a part of them, now, that the spinal damage means there will be no crutches. Some, he teaches to manage cutlery, a pen.

Melissa gives him Stiles’s file and a nod, and walks away.

Derek sits with a cup of coffee and reads.

The kid will walk. Will, or should; he’s young, he was strong and fit before this happened and his legs have had six weeks to heal. He chuckles lightly at Stiles’s real first name. No wonder he goes by ‘Stiles’.

Psych report is less good. The kid’s depressed. No one to visit him except Melissa McCall. His friends stayed around the first week or so but had to head off to separate colleges to start classes and he’s been lonely as hell. Bad attitude. Rude to doctors and nurses alike and angry as a cornered cat about the fact his father’s funeral happened while he was still unconscious.

Derek crunches an apple, eating everything, the core, the deep bruise on one side, and stares out the window for a long time.

And then he heads up to the ward where Stiles is lying sullen and probably terrified.

“Hey,” is what he says, because he is a man of few words.

Stiles shakes his head and stares at the ceiling and says “yeah, no. I’m not ready.”

“Sure you are. C’mon. Short session today.”

“I said I’m not ready. Pain’s like a seven.”

“Bullshit.”

“You don’t know.”

Derek angles the wheelchair by the bed and cranks Stiles into a seated position. “The longer you wait the worse this is gonna be, kid.”

“Don’t call me kid.”

Derek has done this a thousand times. He knows every lie a client will tell himself and every lie he’ll tell his physical therapist.

He also knows that what Stiles want more than anything right now is for Derek to say ‘fine, let’s try again tomorrow.’ And it’s exactly what Derek will never say because tomorrow never ever comes. Tomorrow Stiles will say his pain’s an eight or a nine and some days he’ll beg for extra meds and in a month, maybe two, his doctors will start talking pain management, long term disability. A motorized wheelchair.

He could tell all that to Stiles now but it’s too soon.

“You’re scared.”

“I’m not. I’m in pain.”

And it would also be a good idea to point out that the longer he waits the worse the pain’s gonna be and the more the muscles in his arms and legs will atrophy but he’s in no rush. Derek can stay put, stay silent. He crosses his arms and waits because he may not know Stiles but he’s seen him talk with a mouth full of pizza, seen him spill a milkshake all over that strawberry blonde girl (Derek can’t remember her name, drove her home once when her car broke down though and he remembers her saying “Thanks for the ride. I carry mace and a rape whistle”), and he knows enough about Stiles to know one thing;

A kid like Stiles can’t stay quiet and ignore Derek for long.

“Just one more day,” is his first approach.

Derek shifts his weight, looks down. Looks up again.

“Can we just. Later?”

“Your pain is at it’s lowest at this time of the day. It’s gonna be this time, every day, starting today, until you’re managing on crutches.”

Stiles shakes his head again and fuck, Derek is pretty sure he’s gonna cry. Doesn’t bother Derek. He’s seen tears. Tears of pain, tears of anger. Tears of exhaustion. Problem is when someone hates him for having seen those tears. So Derek crosses to the window and looks out over Beacon Hills, drinking it in with his eyes. “Bet you’re looking forward to seeing a bit of sunshine."

“Melissa takes me out there every day.”

“For what. Five minutes? Ten?” He turns, unsmiling, and Stiles meets his eyes. “You played lacrosse. You’re used to being out there in it.”

“Go away,” is Stiles’s last try.

“You’re gonna get in this wheelchair and I’m gonna take you to the physical therapy room. If you still feel like being a little bitch then, I’ll bring you back.”

It’s a lie, but the ‘bitch’ comment meets its mark.

“Fine,” Stiles says, and his lip curls down.

He resents, deeply, Derek lifting him in a bridal carry from the bed to the wheelchair but Derek is used to being hated by the people he helps. In the end, they like him. Enough. They hate him less, anyway.

Stiles doesn’t say a word until they get to the physical therapy room and the first thing he does is look at his lap and swear that he’ll do it tomorrow. Tomorrow.

“Today,” Derek says, lining Stiles’s wheelchair up at the walking apparatus. “You ready?”

“I don’t know how many more times I can say ‘no’,” Stiles complains.

Crouching in front of the chair, Derek says, “hold out your arms.”

Stiles complies, but won’t meet Derek’s eyes. No problem. Derek takes Stiles’s wrists in his hands. “Force your wrists apart. Push against me.”

Stiles does nothing.

“Stiles. If you ever want to get out of this chair you’re gonna co-operate. You know how hard it is for a dude in a wheelchair to get anything but pity-laid?”

That sort of works and Stiles looks sort of pissed so Derek laughs, and their eyes meet for the first time.

Stiles is pale, too thin. Eyes a color Derek can’t even name. He has a few deep cuts on his face that haven’t finished healing, leftovers from the accident. Some will scar and others will fade completely, in a couple of months.

“What’s it gonna be, Stiles? A pity fuck every couple of years, or are you gonna start working with me here?”

It’s a trick, knowing how far you can push them. Takes time, practice. A bit of instinct, and a lot of bullshit. Truth is Derek knows guys who’ve gotten married in their chairs, had kids, but he also knows what will push a teenager’s buttons. But when Derek instructs Stiles again to try to force his wrists apart, and then to try to bring them close again, testing the strength in Stiles’s arms, Stiles does it. Pushes, and pulls, and yeah, he’s not as strong as he ought to be, but he’s not weak, either.

“I’m going to lift you out of that chair in a minute. You’re going to grab the bars and put as much weight on your arms as you can but I’m going to keep holding you. I won’t let you fall. And then you’re gonna stand up.”

Stiles swallows, panic evident on his face but Derek wraps his arms around him and lifts.

Stiles sort of… relaxes.

Like he’s being hugged, not lifted, and it occurs to Derek that probably no one has touched him except to poke and prod or haul him into a wheelchair in weeks and that he misses his friends, and his father; it’s cool. If he needs this to be a hug it can sort of be that, for a moment. Stiles rests his head on Derek’s shoulder for a second and Derek feels tears soak through his shirt.

“I’ve got you,” he promises, and Stiles reaches for the bars.

“Stand up.”

He does that, too, and they begin a slow, halting march across the mats. Close to the other end it becomes too much and Stiles cries out and Derek takes all of his weight again, carries him back to the chair.

Stiles covers his eyes with his hand and sobs and Derek rubs circles into Stiles’s shoulder. “You did it. You did it,” is all he says, and after a while Stiles stops.

“Told you I wasn’t ready.”

“I told you you _were_ ready. And I was right. That was a good start.”

“Yeah, sure.”

In the corridor before they reach the lifts Derek hesitates, and turns them around, and Stiles glances up over his shoulder; not enough to see Derek but enough so Derek knows he’s surprised. He wheels him out to a sunny courtyard after pausing at a vending machine to get a couple of cans of mountain dew and Stiles raises his eyebrows and mutters “Thanks,” popping the can open and taking a long drink.

Derek sits on a bench and lets the sun beat down on him.

“Every day, huh?”

“Every day.” Derek finishes his drink and waits patiently and eventually Stiles sighs, and they head back inside.

 

**

 

The first week there are good days and bad days and though Stiles is mostly silent, he speaks enough so that eventually Derek gets called every name in the book. He takes it all and Stiles walks haltingly along the apparatus until his arms can’t hold him up any more and he weeps a few silent tears every day.

Derek stops at the ground floor nurse’s station and frowns at Melissa.

“Stiles got anyone who comes to visit?”

Melissa sighs. “Me. Scott will be here for a visit in a few weeks…” she sighs again. “He’s got no one.”

And that’s why Derek finds himself at Wal-mart, standing in front of rack after rack of board games late on Friday afternoon. Frowning intensely. Really intensely. Like a solid glare will make the appropriate game step forward and reveal itself.

Stiles is a smart kid with a quick mind so Derek buys Trivial Pursuit.

Stiles is eating a pudding cup the way a little kid does when Derek gets back to the hospital with his shiny new game. A scrap at a time, determined to make every mouthful count. Eyes brighter than usual but it’s Friday, and for whatever reason, hospital food is less bad on Fridays so maybe that’s all it is.

Derek feels a little ridiculous. Stiles has a spoon hanging out of his mouth and his eyes are very wide and Derek holds up the game.

“Bored enough to play this with me?”

“About as bored as you must be, if you actually… oh you do, okay,” and Derek is actually a little cheered by the mile-a-minute raving he is now doing, which seems more like him, really. “Trivial Pursuit, huh? Least it’s the new one, dad had a copy and it was all stuff about the Munich Olympics and the USSR and who starred in the original Broadway production of ‘A streetcar named Desire’.” There’s so much plastic. Plastic around the box itself and plastic around the boxes of cards and the little plastic pie pieces and the whole time they’re unwrapping, Stiles’s ridiculous face is contorting around the hundred thousand things he hasn’t said all week because there’s no one to listen.

Derek pulls out a couple of bottles of pop and a pack of peanut butter cups and Stiles really lights up. Derek shakes his head and grumbles and insists on rolling the dice first because he doesn’t let anyone get one over on him, even a cripple like Stiles and that definitely, definitely meets its mark, because Stiles laughs with his mouth full of chocolate and promises Derek that this games is “all about brains, my friend, and that is where I will beat you soundly.”

As it turns out they’re pretty evenly matched and each is sporting five pie pieces when the night nurse comes to give Derek a funny look and point out that visiting hours are over.

Derek packs up the game, and goes to take it away.

“Nuh-uh. You’ll learn all the answers.” Stiles looks pissed. “Leave it here.”

“Then you’ll learn all the answers.”

The night nurse wrestles the box out of Derek’s hands and points to the door. “Pair of idiot children,” she says.

Stiles looks relieved. He wants Derek to come back and play again. He really does.

That night Derek dreams about Stiles for the first time. Dreams him pinned beneath Derek’s weight on a bed, dreams his lips wrapped around Derek’s cock. He wakes sweating and harder than hard, the weight of the thin sheet tortuous over the sensitive skin and jerks off in the shower, trying not to imagine the hand that strokes his so expertly isn’t his own, but the hand of his emotionally fragile and physically compromised client.

It doesn’t work.

 

**

 

It gradually goes from a couple of nights a week to most nights a week and sometimes it’s a game, and sometimes Derek brings Stiles a book. Sometimes he stays a few hours and sometimes he leaves again almost right away after because Derek has never crossed a line like this, never. Never hung out with a client.

He reminds himself he’s never had a client who had no one in the world before, either. Their visiting hours are full of family members and friends.

Stiles gets slowly stronger. Derek hovers close but Stiles can support himself on his arms, now, is maybe a week from crutches. He’s pushing himself maybe a touch too hard.

“No one here you have to impress, kid,” Derek promises, catching Stiles in his arms when he stumbles. Stiles pushes him away, clutching at the bars, and his eyes go dark.

“Don’t call me kid. I’m not a kid.”

After a few weeks Stiles is getting himself into the wheelchair, taking himself to the physical therapy room. Greeting Derek with that bright, goofy smile and eyelashes so long and fine they can’t be real; the sort of thing Derek has rarely noticed in years, and is now dreaming about on a regular basis. He wheels himself outside to read some afternoons and the color is returning to his face. He’s getting better.

Daily, Derek tells himself it’s a good thing; that one day soon Stiles will leave and never look back and Derek will be glad.

Wal-mart again because they keep getting questions they already know the answers to in Trivial Pursuit. They look like kids’ games, most of them, and Derek is helpless in the face of it. He buys Monopoly and slinks back to the hospital, faintly ashamed.

But Stiles isn’t in his room.

Derek wanders to the cafeteria, to the courtyard, though the air is starting to get cool at night. He asks a nurse and she looks faintly worried.

Derek leaves the game in Stiles’s room and heads to the physical therapy suite.

Stiles is lying on the ground. There’s light still coming in the window, soft, and Stiles’s chest is heaving softly. Crying.

Derek calls the nurses’ station and tells them not to worry, and then he crosses the room.

“I didn’t think you were coming.”

“I’m not even half an hour late.”

“You don’t always come.”

“It’s Friday night. When have I missed a Friday night?”

Stiles wipes his nose with the back of his hand. “Let me help you up,” Derek says, but Stiles shakes his head.

“I just want to wallow,” he says, eyes still leaking. “Not sure how I ended up on the ground but I have a feeling I belong here for now.”

Derek’s not one to judge.

Most of Derek’s family died in the house fire that left him burned, too, left an uncle in long-term care. Derek spent a year and a half in hospital having skin grafts and then doing exactly this, learning how to walk again.

He stands and crosses the room to lock the door and returns to sit by Stiles, and tell the story. The addiction to opiate pain killers, the withdrawal. He was a young teenager himself, and utterly alone, all that time in hospital, with his frightened older sister in another ward, too far away to touch.

He’s scarred, now, scarred badly. But he’s strong. Made something new of his body. Not what he otherwise might have been. Maybe something better.

The sun has nearly disappeared when Derek realizes than Stiles is holding his hand, that he’s running his thumb across Stiles’s wrist. Feeling his pulse, like a bird’s pulse, jumping into his touch.

“We should go,” Derek says, and Stiles shakes his head.

“Just another minute.”

Derek knows what’s going to happen if they stay another minute so he stands, arranges the chair quite unnecessarily, and then leans over to help Stiles to his feet.

Which is when Stiles pulls Derek down and kisses him. Messy, wanting. Lithe fingers curled against the back of Derek’s neck and worse, fifty times worse, Derek is kissing him back. Has coaxed Stiles’s mouth open with his tongue, has pulled Stiles close. Has wrapped arms tight around Stiles and lifted him part-way off the ground, half into Derek’s lap.

This kiss, it’s interesting. It’s quite rough, and inelegant, and they’ve bumped teeth more than once and Derek can’t help wondering what Stiles’s elastic face might be doing right now – something hilarious, no doubt, and he’s wondering whether Stiles’s eyes are open or closed, and also wondering when he closed his own eyes because he really hadn’t meant to do it, much as he doesn’t mean now to let his tongue trail from Stiles’s mouth to his jaw, and up to his ear. He doesn’t mean to let his hips move like this, doesn’t mean to run a hand up into Stiles’s short hair, smell the sweet sweat of his skin. Bury his face in the crook of Stiles’s neck and breathe him in like this.

None of this is okay, but for a minute, Derek is helpless against it.

“Stiles,” he whispers, and Stiles shushes him.

“I know, I know. You can’t. We can’t, I know all of that. I know everything you’re going to say and I have this fantastic idea that if I just talk and talk then you won’t get a chance to say any of it. If I keep my mouth busy or your mouth busy doing other things you won’t be able to tell me I’m your patient or your client or your favorite person to play Trivial fucking Pursuit with…” and his face is buried in Derek’s neck and Derek still has arms wrapped tight around him. Is still breathing in the scent of Stiles’s skin, trying to memorize him because this can’t happen again, not while Stiles is in hospital and Derek realizes he’s half-planning all of what could happen after. Which is more of this and a good deal more than this. He wonders what Stiles would think of his horribly scarred body, the patches on his thighs where skin was taken to graft to his arms. He imagines Stiles’s pink tongue darting over the whorls in his flesh, and at last, he stops himself. “And all I keep thinking is I don’t have anyone. My dad’s dead and my friends are gone and my mom’s long gone and I’m losing a year of college here and I don’t even know if I want to go back or I can go back, even. And I have a house. Did you know that? I own a house, the lawyer came and I signed papers to say it was my house, now,” and Derek is pulling him closer again, “And all I have is you and when I leave the hospital in a couple of weeks I lose you, too. So right now I just need you to shut up and not say all that stuff I know you have to say because I know it all already and I don’t care, I just want you to hold me for a little while longer.”

And then he is silent, and Derek rocks him, still inhaling the scent of his skin.

They’re like that a year, maybe five. Perhaps ten minutes. And slowly, Stiles’s heart slows down again and he relaxes, and Derek all of a sudden wants to keep him, and knows he absolutely can’t.

Not while Stiles is in the hospital.

They move at the same time, Stiles shifting off Derek’s lap to get into position so Derek can lift him back into the chair. But Derek makes him stand a moment with his weight partly supported by the bars and partly supported by his own legs.

“You’ll be okay,” is what Derek says, and he means it, but some light goes out in Stiles’s eyes when he nods.

Back in the ward Stiles practically flinches when he sees Monopoly on the side table.

“I’m tired,” he says. “Might get an early night.”

Derek misses the run-on sentences already.

“Maybe tomorrow…”

“You don’t have to.”

“I…”

“I’m sure you’ve got better things to do on a Saturday than hang out with me.” Stiles stands cautiously, clutching the hand rail to pull himself up onto the bed.

“I…”

But maybe Derek ran out of words telling Stiles about the fire and the hospital because once he is sure Stiles is not going to fall off the bed he nods, once, and walks away.

 

**

 

The following morning Derek finds himself driving out to the burnt-out husk that was the home he nearly got the chance to grow up in.

Technically, no one is allowed past the police perimeter which has long since disintegrated but no one has taken the time to either fence the property in, or destroy the place, yet. So Derek started coming out here, a few years back, after coming back to Beacon Hills. Sitting on the porch with a flask of coffee or drifting though the rooms listening for ghosts.

He imagines bringing Stiles here. Telling him things like “That’s where my mom used to make pancakes” and “there used to be a tire swing on that tree,” showing Stiles where he used to sleep.

And then he stops.

Back in his depressing flat Derek does laundry, flips aimlessly through the newspaper. Cleans out the fridge. He sits on the sofa, tugging mindlessly at a stray thread that has come loose on the arm rest.

 

**

 

“I don’t.”

Stiles looks up from his book. He’s sitting by the window, a walking frame close by so that he can climb back to the bed if he gets tired. He looks by turns delighted and mortified that Derek has shown up, is standing in his room.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t have anything better to do on a Saturday than hang out and play board games with you.”

Derek goes away and comes back with a coffee table stolen from the common room and another chair, and there by the window, he sets up the Monopoly board while Stiles gets up a good head of steam.

“I am awesome at Monopoly, by the way, and pretty good with money generally. But there’s a bit of luck involved too, you know, I think I just roll the dice just right. Hey, did you know you can get, like, Star Trek Monopoly? Maybe not Star Trek specifically but different kinds. In different countries, too, there was a weird kid in middle school. Lars. Lars. Imagine that. Like hi, world, I have a great big nose and my parents called me Lars. Though guys with weirdly big noses in middle school tend end up all tall and burly and handsome, you know? Bet you had one of those noses. Hey, it’s lucky your face didn’t get burned, because you’d… I mean…” And he looks scared for a second, like he’s said the wrong thing, referring to the fire. So Derek gives him a smile because yeah, he’s glad too. That his face is normal.

Because his body is not.

“Hat?”

Stiles shakes his head. “Dog,” he says. “I’m more a dog person than a hat person. My head is actually bigger than it looks. So hats don’t often fit that good, and a poorly fitting hat is sort of tragic. Dog. Anyway. Lars had Monopoly from, I don’t even know. Sweden? Switzerland? Which country has milk?”

“Milk? Don’t all countries have milk?”

“Cream, then…” and on and on into the afternoon and Derek realizes Stiles is just grateful that their weird interlude the previous day hasn’t done any permanent damage to their… whatever.

He makes faces and talks and Derek grunts, mainly, but finds himself smiling a lot as well and buys snacks from the vending machine and steals extra pudding cups from the cafeteria with a wink at the lunch ladies and the by the time evening has rolled around, and dinner is being served, they have to admit that it’s going to be a tie. Both so rich they don’t care how many hotels they land on.

“We should be running the economy,” Stiles says. Brave little face. “I guess you have to go.”

“Yeah, I do.”

He really doesn’t; but he helps Stiles, who is beyond tired, back to the bed, and slips off into the cooling air of the early evening.

Near his car, he bumps into Melissa, who gives a worried smile, and hesitates, and turns to Derek with a question buzzing on her lips.

“He has no one, Melissa,” Derek warns. “He’ll be out of here soon and headed back to school. There is no line being crossed.”

Lies, lies, lies.

Melissa holds his gaze for a few more seconds, and then scurries inside to begin her shift.

 

**

 

Stiles is doing well on crutches.

There’s a week where it’s physical therapy and nothing else because Scott is there, hanging out whenever he’s allowed to. Stiles uses the stationary bicycle because the walking apparatus is getting easy. His arms are strong and his legs are getting there.

Because he has someone else to talk to his run-on sentences are getting less and Derek misses them hysterically. Ridiculously. He sits in his depressing apartment and wishes he had a dog.

Scott goes back to school and Stiles prepares to leave the hospital.

“I’m going home,” he says, like he’s not sure he really wants to. “It’s… I don’t know, without my dad, it’s not gonna feel like home.”

Derek blinks, and frowns. “You up for Monopoly tonight?”

“No,” Stiles says. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Derek stops at the nurses’ station and waits for Melissa to look up.

“You have a key to the Stilinski’s.”

Melissa nods. “Just to get his clothes. I…”

Derek holds his hand out.

“No.”

“He has to move into it in a week and it needs to be clean.”

“I can…”

Derek’s hand is still out.

“There are lines being crossed here,” Melissa says, quietly. But she takes the key from her key-chain anyway. “I hope to god you know what you’re doing.”

Derek doesn’t even smile as he slouches away.

A few evenings is all it takes. The fridge is empty (Melissa is a practical woman) but he cleans the rest of the kitchen thoroughly. Derek vacuums and mops and dusts and tidies. He closes the door to the Sheriff’s bedroom because it’s up to Stiles, what he does with that. He cleans the bathrooms more thoroughly than he ever does his own and buys a mat for the shower that will prevent Stiles from slipping on his still-weak legs. Installs a rail Stiles can use to hold himself up, if he needs to.

On the final evening, Derek sits on the couch for a few long moments.

Lets his eyes drift shut, and breathes in the smell of the place. Admittedly it mostly smells a little musty and closed-up, but underneath that, there is Stiles’s scent, his father’s, too. Long-established smells. The bourbon the Sheriff favored and Stiles’s lacrosse-sweat.

Yeah, lines have been crossed. Derek doesn’t much care. Stiles will be out of the hospital soon and he won’t be a client any more and maybe there’s something to this and maybe there’s not. He’ll find out soon enough. And Stiles will probably head back to school and that’s great, too, though it makes Derek’s heart hurt to think about it too long.

If Derek closes his eyes he can almost hear Stiles talk and talk and talk in his ear, rattle on about everything and nothing at all. It’s a comforting, domestic sound.

Derek locks up the house and leaves again.

 

**

 

One more week of physical therapy and board games. Stiles is listless. This is common. His life keeps changing on him.

Derek talks to him about the physical therapist he’ll be seeing in town once he leaves and Stiles’s face crumples. His mouth goes slack.

“Can’t I…” He half-reaches for Derek’s wrist, “can’t I come back here and just…”

Derek glances at the door. “No, Stiles.”

“But I…”

“Stiles…” Derek is crap at expressing anything close to emotion so he hopes his eyes communicate what we knows his words won’t. “I need not to be your therapist any more.”

Stiles blinks, rapidly. Eyelashes catching the sunlight that streams into the room through the slatted blinds.

“Oh,” he says, and Derek feels relieved. Stiles gets it.

“It’ll be better,” he says. “It’ll be easier…”

“Of course it will.”

“And Melissa’s taking you home.”

“Great.”

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

 

**

 

Only Stiles goes home a day early and Derek’s not sure why; only that he feels like he maybe missed something huge. He goes about his day teaching stroke victims how to hold forks and building up the physical strength of a middle aged man recovering from a heart attack and worrying and fretting and the second his day is over he drives to the Stilinski’s.

Stiles answers the door with his face set in a cool but friendly mask.

“Can I…”

Stiles raises his eyebrows and doesn’t speak.

“Are you going to invite me in?”

“Uh.” Stiles looks over his shoulder. “Busy, actually.”

“Oh.”

Derek stands for a good while longer because if truth be told he thought he’d have Stiles in his arms by now, thought he’d be half-carrying him up the stairs, and instead he’s standing on the porch like a rejected prom date.

“You up for Monopoly later?” Is one of the things Derek wants to say and doesn’t. “I could order pizza” is another. “If you swear you won’t tell Melissa I’m corrupting you I’ll even throw in a six-pack” is another thing Derek really wants to say and doesn’t.

He also wants to say _talk, talk, tell me things. Open that sweet mouth and don’t censor yourself because I can barely string a sentence together some days and listening to you makes it easier_. He doesn’t say that, either.

Stiles sends his eyebrows almost all the way up into his hairline, expectantly, and Derek forces himself to smile, though he suspects it must look all wrong; wonky or angry or rueful or something.

“Well, you’ve got my number,” is the thing he settles on, and he turns on his heel and lopes away.

 

**

 

Three times more, Derek goes to the Stilinski house. The first time, he actually knocks. The second and third times he drives away without stopping because he can’t bear to be turned away.

 

**

 

Derek strips down to skin and stands in front of a full length mirror which he would have removed long ago, if this was his own place. He avoids it, usually. He examines the scar tissue, the burns and the grafts with an air of detachment, telling himself all the time that someone like Stiles could never love something so hideous.

And then he closes his eyes against it. Against all of it. Against his own mutilated body and against Stiles Stilinski and his ridiculous face.

Better off, that way.

**Author's Note:**

> I think the only way I'm going to finish this is with a push.  
> So if you like it, gimme a push, guys.


End file.
